


I Know I'm Not Your Favorite Record

by acareeroutofrobbingbanks



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Fluff, Indie movie AU, M/M, No Sex, just budding romance, just cutesy junk, kinda boring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acareeroutofrobbingbanks/pseuds/acareeroutofrobbingbanks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete wasn't a Grinch. He didn't hate buskers, and he usually dropped a dollar in every case he passed in the city. But this particular guy has the nerve to show up and start playing love songs on HIS street corner, on the day of the worst break up of Pete's life-well, that's not the sort of thing Pete had the tendency to be fond of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know I'm Not Your Favorite Record

“So, this is really it?” Pete asked. His girlfriend, or, now his ex girlfriend, he supposed, was throwing technicolor lingerie haphazardly into a black vinyl suitcase. They had picked out that suitcase together, before going on a trip to the Keys. She had laughed when he bought it, resting her head in the crook of his neck and whispering to stir the hair at the base of his skull.

“Yes, Pete,” she sighed, like she was explaining a very basic concept to a dimwitted child. She pushed her black hair behind her shoulder, all silky and smooth. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Pete was doing a very good job of remaining calm, he thought. He was tired, mostly, tired of kicking and screaming through this relationship. And she kept looking at him like she was afraid of him, which just made him feel worse. But he was too old, he thought, to fight back, to put on a show and throw a tantrum the way he used to. So instead, when she zipped up the suitcase, he said: “Do you want a hand with that?”

He carried her bag down to the curb, and they stood there staring at each other for a moment. The wind whipped her hair around her face, and God, Pete did love her hair so much. There was nothing between them, no noise, nothing seen, and the way she looked at him, Pete felt certain that if he begged her to come back, she would.

Then, out of nowhere, they heard a guitar begin to play, and a sweet, tenor voice coming from somewhere behind Pete began to sing “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”.

“ _Wise men say_ ,” whoever it was began to croon, with a very pretty voice indeed, but when he began singing, the spell was broken. She turned away from Pete, to face the curb, and hailed a cab.

“ _But I can’t help falling in love_ -”

“Hey, wait!” Pete said, as a taxi pulled up to where she stood. She turned, and Pete grabbed the bag, unzipped it, and let all of her clothes and books of Spanish poetry and old Beatles cds crash onto the sidewalk. She gaped at him.

“That’s my suitcase.” Pete said.

“ _Like a river flows surely to the sea, darling so it goes_ ,” the man continued to sing, oblivious to what was going on. She started screaming, but Pete snapped the suitcase closed and turned around, walking back into his apartment. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of an attractive young man, practically a teenager, with his guitar case next to his feet.The kid turned to Pete and grinned, totally oblivious, and Pete scowled at him, He shrugged, turning to face the street again, singing his heart out.

As soon as he was up in the apartment, it felt too empty, too quiet, too cold without her. So first, Pete turned up the heat, and turned on loud Morrissey. But after singing along for a while, he got too hot, and opened the window, where the dumb busker on the street corner was still playing.

The faint strains of another old love song drifted up through the window to Pete’s ears, and every note hurt. He slammed the window shut, and lay on the bed, letting the tears fall down, at last.

Pete called in sick to work the next day. And the day after the that. He came in on the third day, though, and as he was walking down to the L, he saw the same musician, on Pete’s same street corner.

When he looked over, the kid was swaying back and forth, strumming and singing with his eyes closed reverently behind his glasses, a grungy old trucker cap jammed on his head. The kid opened his eyes at the end of the song, and grinned a big, dopey grin at Pete, practically begging him with his eyes to put some money in the guitar case.

Pete paused in front of him, only for a second, and the kid began singing while still staring at Pete, playing some song Pete didn’t know but was clearly meant to.

“ _Live in my house, I’ll be your shelter, just pay me back, with one thousand kisses_ ,” he started, smiling and staring right at Pete. Pete drew back, a look of shock coming onto his face because, oh God, was this dude, the decidedly younger dude, flirting with him? The look of shock might have come off as a look of disgust, because the guy with the guitar looked sort of hurt, and he faltered a bit in singing. He shook himself off, then looked back down to his case before continuing.

“ _Be my lover, I’ll cover you_ ,” he sang down to the pavement.

Pete felt bad all day at work, but he reasoned with himself that he had just been through a breakup, and it was normal to not want to hear love songs right now. It made him sick to think of the sappy love songs coming off his corner all hours of the day.

When walking home, Pete almost stopped at an ATM to get some cash out, in case the kid was still out, but he decided against it. The street was empty by the time he got back anyways.

It wasn’t like Pete was a Grinch. He didn’t usually hate buskers, but it figured that the kid who played nothing but love songs just had to show up the day of one of the worst break ups in his life. And every day when he went to work, all he could think about was her as he heard the pretty voice caressing old and new lyrics about being so in love. Jason Mraz, the Beatles, Madonna, A Day to Remember, Kanye West for some reason. There seemed to be no end to it.

Every single day, Pete would walk by the guy and glare. At first, the guy looked wounded that Pete was glaring at him, but after a couple of weeks, he just smirked when Pete glared, and would sing a little bit louder.

Yeah, Pete was really beginning to hate the guy.

Except, after a few weeks, around the same time the kid started smiling at Pete instead of looking sad when he got glared at, Pete began to notice other things about him, apart from just the love songs.

He noticed the sleepy looking blue-green eyes.

He noticed the hair that fell down behind the wire frames of the glasses.

He noticed the beads of sweat that pooled up in the man’s collar.

And he was starting to notice the way the musician’s eyes followed Pete all the way down the street when he was walking to the train. Or, maybe he had already noticed it. He was starting to not mind.

“ _And you can tell everybody this is your song_ ,” the guy sang, catching Pete’s eye and smirking at him, “ _It may be quite simple but now that it’s done, I hope you don’t mind_ -”

“I do mind,” Pete muttered under his breath, wanting to walk faster, but unable to convince himself, actually slowing down to listen to more. He had a pretty voice, if Pete could ignore the words. For once, Pete actually stopped, just looking at him and listening.

“ _I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words how wonderful life is while you’re in the world_ ,” he sang, and abruptly stopped, calling out.

“Hey dude?” the guy asked.

“Yeah?” Pete replied, his voice getting gruff and defensive.

“You listen to me play every day,” he informed Pete. “It’s considered polite to tip,” he toed the guitar case, and Pete scowled.

“I’ll tip you when you play something that’s not a fucking love song,” Pete spat, and he walked off.

The next day was Saturday, but as he waited for Monday, Pete felt anxiety pooling in his stomach. He had been rude to the guy, and now he would have to see him again, and he was so under-prepared for it. He didn’t want to deal with this. He wanted to wallow over his girlfriend in peace. He didn’t ask for a cute boy with a guitar to make all this so much more complicated.

On Monday as soon as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the guy, rather than getting mad at Pete, grinned, and immediately started singing.

“ _I thought I found someone, I thought I had something I could trust, I still can’t believe what happened, it’s not that you lied to us_ ,” he sang, beaming over at Pete proudly, and Pete felt, most presently, confusion.

“ _And I’m afraid that you’ve become, everything that you had hated_ ,” Pete had to resist the urge to sing along when the guy got to the chorus, a small smile growing on Pete’s face against his will.

Pete walked over to the man, staring at him with narrowed eyes. He stood there, waiting until the song finished.

“That was Midtown.” Pete said.

“Yeah,” the guy said. “I saw you wearing one of their shirts.”

“That… wasn’t a love song.” Pete said, his eyes still narrowed in suspicion.

“It wasn’t.” the man agreed. “Also, requests definitely need tips.” Pete felt a rush of guilt come up inside him.

“Um, do you take credit?” he asked guiltily. The man laughed a little.

“I take coffee?” he suggested, pointing over at a coffee shop across the street.

“I’ve got to go to work,” Pete began, but as the man’s face fell, he shrugged, “but I can be late today.” He was immediately rewarded with a huge, dopey grin from the guy, and he knew he had made a good decision.

“I’m Patrick, by the way,” Patrick introduced himself as they walked into the coffee shop together.

“Nice to meet you,” Pete chuckled. “I’m Pete.”

Patrick was a musician, he told Pete, to which Pete resisted the urge to say, “No, really?” he was a few years younger than Pete, and he loved dogs.

Patrick also told Pete things without saying them. He barely touched the coffee Pete bought him, grimacing every time he forced himself to take a sip. His guitar case, already scuffed up, managed to get banged into every surface in the cafe. He pulled his hat down over his eyes everytime he answered a question about himself.

Pete hadn’t smiled that much in months, but it wasn’t until he got to work (two hours late) that he realized he that that might have been a date.

Pete started setting his alarm earlier so that he could take Patrick out to coffee in the mornings after listening to a song or two. As per his request, love songs were taken off the menu, replaced by The Ramones and the Beastie Boys, which was hilarious coming from the 5’4” kid with an acoustic guitar.

Patrick never asked if they were dates, and neither did Pete, but they felt like they were. He asked Joe one day, who shrugged.

“Would you be okay if you saw him kissing someone that wasn’t you?” Joe asked.

“No, but that’s not saying much.” Pete argued.

“Would you be okay if he saw you kissing someone that wasn’t him?” Joe asked.

Pete’s silence seemed answer enough for his friend, who chuckled, walking away as he wished Pete good luck. ‘Good luck with what?’ Pete wanted to scream, but didn’t.

"I haven't even kissed him though." Pete said miserably instead.

“How did you know about Midtown?” Pete asked one morning. Patrick drank the coffee without even grimacing anymore. Conditioned into liking it, like Pavlov, Pete thought.

“I told you,” Patrick said, still smiling, “You wore a Midtown shirt. They’re okay.”

“Okay,” Pete snorted.

“Excuse me if I don’t worship every pop punk to talk about their cities and their friends and their shitty ex girlfriends.” Patrick replied.

“And yet you listen to nineties pop music…” Pete sighed.

“Resigning oneself to any genre for the rest of my life sounds like hell.” Patrick said. “And I make Britney sound good.”

Pete couldn’t disagree.

One morning, Pete wasn’t sure how many months into their strange acquaintanceship, he brought flowers. He had bought them the afternoon before, and the water he had put them in didn’t seem to have worked. The carnations were wilted beyond all repair, and he self consciously threw them in the trash on his way downstairs. He could not lose his nerve today.

“Hey, um,” he started as Patrick finished the song. “I was, uh, thinking, maybe sometime we could see each other, like, not in the morning?”

Patrick raised his eyebrows.

“A date.” Pete said firmly. “I’m asking you out on a date.” And then, he threw the only surviving flower into the guitar case.

“I’d also like to request,” he added, “that you play a love song this morning.”

Patrick’s smile lit up the whole block, and there was no one but him in Pete’s mind as he began to play.

" _No I can't help falling in love with you._ " _  
_

**Author's Note:**

> Hi my name is Elizabeth and while this was fun I pour my heart and soul into The High Way To Hell, so if you could give that a chance, it would be rad of you.  
> Got this from a prompt that said something along the lines of "Person A plays music on the street Person B lives on, but only plays songs Person B hates."


End file.
